Love triangle ends in murder

19-year-old son of a policeman kidnapped, then strangled to death by his ex-lover's boyfriend as he had expressed his displeasure at the new-found liaison; Aai and not mummy in victim's message to mother helps cops nab murderer

Call it the sixth sense of a mother. A message from her son that said he would be late aroused her suspicions that all was not well. But little did she know that at that very moment life was being snuffed out of her son. Pramod Jagtap, son of an Assistant Police Inspector of the State Intelligence Department, was kidnapped and then strangled and burnt. He had gone missing on Friday evening after he went out with his friends.

Love killed him: Pratik Jagtap, who was kidnapped and murdered

The message from her son read 'Aai mee ghari usheerane yenaar' (Mother I will be late) set the mother thinking, for her son always called her mummy and not aai (Marathi for mother). She immediately lodged a formal missing complaint at the Vishrantwadi police station. The police traced Jagtap's call history and found that he had received a couple of calls from a BPO employee from Wagholi.

The police picked up a call centre employee for questioning and on further probing found out that Pravin Chaugule was instrumental in kidnapping and then killing Jagtap. This led to the arrest of four more people who had allegedly abducted and killed Jagtap because he opposed Chaugule's relationship with his former girlfriend.Jagtap was a student of Bachelor of Computer Science at Model College. The police said in his confession, Chaugule said that Jagtap picked up an argument with him which spiralled into a full blown fight, Chaugule and his friends then strangled Jagtap in Shikrapur and torched his body and disposed it in a dry canal.

"Chaugule was picked up for questioning and has confessed to his crime and revealed the names of four others who were his partners-in-crime. The others arrested in this case are Yashwant Khamkar, Anil Aasgekar, Devendra alias Gotya Ashok Mane and car driver Ramesh Devdurge," said DCP Sanjay Jadhav. The police said all others, except the driver, were working with Chaugule who also had a small business in his village in Ichalkarnji. DCP Jadahav said the Shivajinagar police had picked up three men from Ichalkaranji. The Vishrantwadi police said Jagtap was friends with a girl who worked with Chaugule in a call centre. After Jagtap and the girl drifted apart, she started living with Chaugule and soon they decided to marry. This was objected to by Jagtap, and he insisted on meeting Chaugule to discuss this issue. Chaugule took him in his car on Friday and as their discussion turned violent, Chaugule allegedly killed him. The Vishrantwadi police recovered Jagtap's body in a burned state, and relatives of the deceased identified his body on last morning. The body was sent in for autopsy and handed over to Jagtap's parents last evening.

CCTV evidencePolice asked CCTV footage from Shikrapur Toll Plaza to substantiate their evidence that the six including Chaugule had traveled past the toll plaza on Friday, moments before Jagtap was killed.